Hm. Video playback resolution.

So, I'm in the planning stage of a fairly large project, and I'm going to be building an HTPC (Among other things. Going to use HyperV when it's released later this year to turn it into a multipurpose server), and I'll also be getting a 1080p project with an HQV processor for upscaling. Now, I've seen this same processor do pertty amazing things to DVDs (Side by side with 720p versions of the same video, the difference between the two pictures is nearly unnoticeable) in other displays.

But, since I'll be moving to an HTPC, and plan on keeping it in 1900x1080 resolution, I'm a bit concerned about playing my DVD collection from the machine. I know if I just fullscreen the video, it'll do the scaling itself, which I don't want.

Are there any video playback programs out there that will change the resolution while playing the video, like games do? I'd like for it to drop down into whatever resolution the video is native to, and have the HQV do all of the scaling.

well you are certainly aware about the legalities that make that unfeasable.

IIRC, microsoft makes a media player activex control for .Net applications. Theoretically, it would not be terribly difficult to make a simple interface that would play DVD's and change system resolutions based on the resolution of the source file. Whether or not this is a good approach is up for argument.

Is there really much legal debate about the choice of a consumer to take DVDs they own and rip them to a computer? I don't plan on streaming these across the network, or sharing them, or anything of that nature.

Would MCE be able to change the resolution? I was thinking I'd like to go with MythTV or similar, but if MCE would fit my needs, I've certainly got no problem with using it.

Hm. Well, there is demand out there for the feature - I saw several threads asking about it on the VLC forums, so I'm sure something has to have it. When I get back from vacation, I'll have to check out powerdvd and such.